What's the difference between paltry and worthless?

Paltry


Definition:

  • (superl.) Mean; vile; worthless; despicable; contemptible; pitiful; trifling; as, a paltry excuse; paltry gold.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She says that the spread of insecure, short-term contracts and part-time work, together with benefits cuts and paltry wage growth, have meant that many people in work are struggling to make ends meet.
  • (2) Let’s leave that discussion to another day, but imagine a combination of the two – sort of Transformers meets Ex Machina – in which a race of giant sexy robots battles it out with another race of really mean giant sexy robots while paltry human beings look on in awe, and teenage boys (and girls) experience incredibly conflicting and disturbing sensual awakenings in the front row of the Beckenham Odeon.
  • (3) Only Orange's pay monthly deals come with Wi-Fi access and they only include a paltry 750MB of Wi-Fi browsing – again through BT Openzone's network of hotspots.
  • (4) In 2010 Bedder 6 paid out total dividends of £1.68m — which saw Clarkson pocket a comparatively paltry £850,000 when his share is calculated and his annual service payment is added in — meaning his income from Bedder 6 has almost tripled year on year.
  • (5) A paltry 50g of brown rice takes up over a third of your daily calorie count.
  • (6) By his own lofty standards Cavendish's return of two stage wins from this year's Tour has been paltry and myriad signs of hitherto unseen fallibility, a team that is clearly not good enough to work in his service and suggestions that his star is on the wane will leave him with much to ponder.
  • (7) If the recession results in interest rates remaining low for years, as many in the City are now predicting, then annuity rates will also remain at paltry levels.
  • (8) Frontex’s annual budget is a paltry €90m (£65m).
  • (9) Russia and China , meanwhile, have contributed a paltry $17.8 million and $1.2 million, respectively.
  • (10) It is the result of rejecting the world of public disengagement and laissez faire that delivered one paltry gold medal in Atlanta just 16 years ago.
  • (11) The value has now decreased slightly and their share probably sits at a paltry $10m.
  • (12) In 1959, US intelligence estimates suggested that the USSR would be in possession of between 1,000 and 1,500 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) compared to America’s paltry 100.
  • (13) Co-operative customer #3 is making do with a paltry state pension, subsidising the cost of groceries with a fortnightly package from the local food bank and unable to afford energy bills.
  • (14) The food industry spends over £1bn a year on marketing in the UK, compared with the paltry £14m spent on the government's anti-obesity campaign.
  • (15) The Italians are earning paltry returns from knocking out white goods in competition with the Chinese and Koreans.
  • (16) A paltry £1,000 for each marginal Labour candidate hardly buys a poster site.
  • (17) The sums are so paltry that the animus seems deliberate.
  • (18) As he itemises the contents of the pawnbroker's shop ("a few old China cups; some modern vases, adorned with paltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish guitars; or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg painfully elevated in the air by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gaiety …") you sense that Dickens barely knows how to stop.
  • (19) Yet he went on to pretend a paltry array of stimuli will fix the problem: he cannot possibly believe that loose change from the petty cash will arrest the plunge in employment and growth.
  • (20) Growth for the UK in 2012 will be a paltry 0.6%, the IMF says.

Worthless


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute of worth; having no value, virtue, excellence, dignity, or the like; undeserving; valueless; useless; vile; mean; as, a worthless garment; a worthless ship; a worthless man or woman; a worthless magistrate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) KR: She was truly in a conundrum because without the app, she felt too worthless to try and fix it by installing an update.
  • (2) The lack of Ab2 anti-Ab1 anti-HLA makes worthless the utilization of such preparations for neutralization of Ab1 present in highly sensitized dialysis patients or suppression of their production in transplanted patients in contrast with the previous reports suggesting this possibility.
  • (3) Former Labour science minister Lord Sainsbury said any assurances would be "frankly meaningless" given Pfizer's history of asset-stripping.Allan Black, of the GMB union which represents workers at AstraZenea's Macclesfield factory, said of Pfizer's latest pledges: "Similar undertakings were given by US multinationals before which have proved to be worthless."
  • (4) The biggest loser could be the state-owned oil company Rosneft, which bought Yukos assets in auctions when the latter's stock was almost worthless.
  • (5) Nobody is sure what dangerous chemical imbalance this would create but the Fiver is convinced we'd all be dust come October or November, the earth scorched, with only three survivors roaming o'er the barren landscape: Govan's answer to King Lear, ranting into a hole in the ground; a mute, wild-eyed pundit, staring without blinking into a hole in the ground; and a tall, irritable figure standing in front of the pair of them, screaming in the style popularised by Klaus Kinski, demanding they take a look at his goddamn trouser arrangement, which he has balanced here on the platform of his hand for easy perusal, or to hell with them, for they are no better than pigs, worthless, spineless pigs.
  • (6) Where we revere and anthropomorphise such brutal predators as sharks, tigers and bears, we view these tiny ectoparasites as worthless, an evolutionary accident with no redeeming or adorable characteristics.
  • (7) In addition to the climate risk, the Bank of England and others argue that fossil fuel assets may pose a “huge risk” to pension funds and other investors as they could be rendered worthless by action to slash carbon emissions.
  • (8) We have to acknowledge that it's extremely hard to build a regular city from scratch.” Furthermore, some experts say that certified green buildings and pedestrian-friendly roads are a worthless patch for China’s environmental woes, not a solution.
  • (9) His comments came as voucher experts said consumers have probably lost at least £100m in now worthless HMV vouchers.
  • (10) Chris Leslie, Labour's shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said: "Nobody doubts that Stephen Hester has done some important things at RBS, but what this award shows is David Cameron's promises about reining in excessive bonuses at state-owned banks or using shareholder power have proved to be utterly worthless.
  • (11) The drop in ventricular septal temperature was so small that topical hypothermia, by itself, may be worthless.
  • (12) The responses to the upper half field stimulation showed greatest variation making the VEP recording worthless in detecting altitudinal visual field defects.
  • (13) The future of Game Group is hanging by a thread after it filed for administration and admitted the business was worthless, jeopardising 6,000 jobs in the UK.
  • (14) But it is all merely worthless and meaningless froth while the city council permits a gateway to hell to do brisk business just a few streets away.
  • (15) If we look at who has what in Syria, you will see that Isis is only controlling the desert, and it is worthless.
  • (16) "He had no job, he didn't go on holiday … he felt worthless … Thank you, Theresa May , from the bottom of my heart – I always knew you had the strength and courage to do the right thing."
  • (17) But companies spent $670bn (£436bn) in 2013 alone searching for more fossil fuels, investments that could be worthless if action on global warming slashes allowed emissions.
  • (18) It's all there: sexual and social confusion, vulnerability and violence, alienation and loneliness, the oscillation between feeling abject and worthless and wanting to take over the world, the fantasies of power and revenge.
  • (19) In May, the then prime minister, Naoto Kan, ordered the killing of livestock by lethal injection after radiation made them commercially worthless.
  • (20) I have been charged very little but I'm concerned that many people holidaying in France will book their car through Firefly, only to discover that their booking is worthless because they cannot drive across the border.